Now I am writing a caricature again about the times I think about..

Our societies in the western world are built by well-fed and sedentary people. Desperate people are constantly looking for answers to questions. Questions that most of time are not especially deep, most of them are about making money or reach some vague form of self-actualisation. You can find skeptics telling that all of the questions society struggle with are just nonsense. But the questions keep drawing full houses. You have the prosperity crowd filling up arenas praying to their god for money, career or a sexy partner. You have crowds of people going nuts over political leaders like the leader were some god or something (He is innocent because he his my dad-crowd). You have pyramid schemes in many forms and every arrangement have some charismatic leader jumping and shouting like this is the best deal ever. We really seem to need this and are ready to pay for this very narrow form of enlightenment process. Do not forget the increased use of drugs and alcohol. People really get another shot these days.

I have been a part of the crowd looking for answers. But there was a break. I got a menial job after a decade of unemployment. Working hour after hour, lifting, packing, communicating with coworkers and customers. I learned that I have no need for any Guru in my life! No need for anybody talking to me about self-actualisation or special texts I have to learn and repeat like a mantra.

My idea is that the service-economy in the sedentary society is a real society wrecker. People are getting desperate. If you get more affluent you get more passive and feel worse in your body. You need another shot, always. But it does not make it. In a month we have an election in my country and I have turned into a member of the labor movement. Going progressive more and more. People need jobs and a life of meaning based on making a change. Just consuming products and living a mindless keep-up-with-Joneses life is a dead end.

Some pastimes are lethal.

https://youtu.be/S0IfbNVCoCE

Don’t think too much and just live. Life is too short. Believe me, it’s not any greener on the other side of the hill.

The best thing is that good is good enough. No need for grandiosity. Just find a way that is good enough. Like the soldiers in the clip. The goal is the get out of the mess.

I went through a phase lasting many years where I ultimately stopped seeking enlightenment as well. I became comfortable with just living. I was no longer trying to perfect myself, and trying to seek higher wisdom. I became okay with being a mere human.

It helps that I'm one of the well-fed. I'm also well educated, and when you realize that people have believed in all sorts of things throughout history, one particular belief set seems no better than the rest. How is the Abrahamic God an improvement over Jupiter or Zeus? No one can say.

One other thing that contributed to my peace was working in one of the helping professions (teaching.) I came to feel that I was doing my bit, that I was doing enough.

Yes, no one can say,

An ex culter told me that it is not the ideas that hurt us but the behavior. So it comes down to that. Accepting being ridiculed and humiliated because of an idea about something higher.

>>Accepting being ridiculed and humiliated because of an idea about something higher.

I got to the point in life where I realized that no one else has any special wisdom above and beyond what I have figured out for myself.

That truth is the way. It can take time to learn it. It took me decades. Still got to learn and adapt.

> I was no
> longer trying to perfect myself, and trying to
> seek higher wisdom. I became okay with being a
> mere human.


That, summer, is the central message of Taoism. The philosophy teaches that the only valid moral code is innate to the individual. Striving to be something other than what one naturally is drives a wedge into the soul, creating unhappiness and ultimately evil.

I don't have a perfect understanding of Taoism, but I've always related to it the best of any philosophy.

Lot’s Wife, my life-time goal has been to achieve wu wei. But I don’t put any effort into it.

I too am a specialist in things not done.

Sometimes I wonder if I may have misunderstood the Taoist masters, but then I go back to not doing things and all is well!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/15/2022 05:11AM by Lot's Wife.

When you don’t do something, do it in the best way possible.

Do not stint when putting things off!

And then there are those that really are on the front line. I have recently made a friend in Kiev. We talk about and around many things but there is always an under current of fear, loss, and uncertainty. The air raid sirens are back. They sent me a pic of their 9 year old son among burned out tanks. They want their children to know and remember. They are reading Harry Potter together because it shows that children can be brave and strong. "It’s difficult to explain our feelings. This is a great sorrow for all of us. And we are very grateful to your country for the support."

This friendship is adjusting my priorities and my relationship with myself.

We lost that in our affluence. When times get rough we can find it again.

I'm not sure how to escape consumerism. The desire for keeping up with the Jones is the driving force of success. Even in the enlightened circles of educated and credentialed americans, people strive and work to be accepted in the group. It takes effort, perhaps in the end its pointless, but still there's effort.

And the alternative, the labor party, the folks who care, possessing so much virtue and passion, with the angels smiling at them ready to smite the rest of us, have the unsettling reality of running out of other people's money, and then what?

Once again I don't understand a chunk of what you say. But to one point I do understand is the "Keeping up with the Jones's" thing. I have never understood that. Who cares what others have?

"Keeping up with the Jones's"
There is always a certain degree of jealously in our lives.
-What someone owns
-better at their job
-Always got the girl (or visa versa)
-More witty
-etc

But most of us mature out of these thoughts and just accept this as reality.

Susan, I've reached a point in life where I want fewer things. If anything, I need to shed. There is only so much room in my house and in my closets. When I shop now, it is almost always for specific things that I need.

Love the way you framed all that Cauda. I was very done with the whole enlightenment thing very young. Went to a few of those pay to get in conferences with someone telling you the secret to life or to riches and they all seemed the same as the Mormon church to me and left me bored and unimpressed. Self help books only help the author to some cash.

Such bifurcation! Mormonism can lead you to MLM's and such, or, can help you see through the rest of the myriad scams.

The gluttony of the Western World and the Mega Corporations profiting from the selfish grabbing of the masses to have everything they believe they deserve and cheap has to end badly.

I see so many people these days like the person eating a package of cookies while they watch TV and don't really taste the cookies or appreciate them after the first one. Just keep shoveling hardly aware they are. Botox, shaped brows, contour make-up--for the men too--red lobster, cheap airfare to get more selfies, and

Living your life hungry is an art. Every food tastes ten times as good when you are starving. You notice every bite. You live through your tongue instead of you extreme insecurity that makes you want to be somebody with all the toys.

To many wants have become conflated with needs these days. You put the finger on a very important point. Being connected to a cult teaches how all the other scams work. It stands out sometimes as very templated and generic. It is the same hucksters.

We escaped keeping up with the Joneses by getting rid of 99% of our stuff, and becoming nomadic retirees. We have no home, just pensions and six suitcases. Fifteen boxes are stored with our son. That’s it.

Sedentary and bored?

Not even close!

Sounds like great freedom moving around discovering the world. Being stuck somewhere is not always a great experience.

Just saw your post, we did the same thing. We own one used car, our clothes and our wine refrigerators.

Cherchons le Vin parfait